Does PF really get 50 bits of paper handed to him each day, as Mr Lamb of the Tablet (infra) asserts? A different media outlet informs us that it is 100. One wonders what the figure will have been inflated to by the time Scicluna makes his report.
There are sections of the Tablet which you can read free on the Internet. I have to problem in Conscience about doing this: since I pay them nothing, I can, I hope, feel fairly confident that just reading it on my computer screen does not make me complicit in their promotion of their own version of Christianity.
In their latest number, my eye was caught by the headline "Zero tolerance is the only way". "Ah", I thought, "our old friend Pedophilia again". It's only a few weeks since PF assured us yet again that his own policy towards that vice is "Zero tolerance". But no; the Tablet reference was to a current problem in the British 'Charity' world. One of our biggest charities, Oxfam, appears to have been employing people whose motive was not so much to feed the poor as to get posted to impoverished countries where they could enjoy wall-to-wall sex at very advantageous rates. And there has been a sheepish acknowledgement that some of the human beings, made in the image of God, whom this sporcizia has been defiling, were probably children. So it is Pedophilia; or, to be fair, Pedophilia Plus.
Memories; memories. The first Oxfam outlet was, I think, in the Broad Street, near Thornton's Bookshop, now, sadly, no more. It was there ... the Oxfam shop, I mean, not Thornton's ... that as a very callow undergraduate I bought my first decanter. It was quite cheap because there was a chip off the stopper. Those were the furtive days when one concealed from one's guests that one was giving them 'South African Sherry'. I still use that decanter. Nowadays, of course, Oxfam promotes Abortion and Contraception, so, to be fair, their miscreant employees were doing nothing worse than consistently following a coherent and widespread ethical system shared by their own organisation: the prioritisation of sexual licence.
And in the same issue, you can discover how the Tablet recommends you pronounce Cupich; evidently ... oh dear ... the Pill thinks we are all going to be pronouncing that dismal disyllable quite often. And you can watch a video of Cardinal Soapy's Cambridge lecture with the questions and answers. Ever a thoughtful pastor, His Eminence explained that, in the Confessional, when we promise amendment, amendment means getting "closer to the ideal".
Please, dear Reader, forgive me for making, in what follows, a point I have made before.
Suppose, in the confessional, somebody confesses to child abuse, pleads diminished responsibilty on the grounds of sick obsession, so that his offences are subjectively no more than venial, and promises to "come closer to the ideal". Perhaps he says "I will cut my abuse down to just once a week". "I will only abuse boys/girls who genuinely seem to enjoy it". "I will be much less penetrative". That ... am I right? ... will, in the eyes of our new Bergoglian ethical Paradigm, constitute a move in the right direction, so that one can warmly commend and then absolve this penitent? Yes? Surely Yes?? At least, one ought not to "make the Confessional a Torture Chamber"? Have I got all this right? If not, why not?
I then moved on to a piece by Christopher Lamb. It concerns the letter which, apparently, Cardinal O'Malley was supposed to have handed to PF with regard to the Bishop Barros scandal. Lamb assures us (is this what the PF clique is now putting around in preparation for a cover-up?) that PF is handed 50 things a day and really can't be expected to look at them all. Really? Then PF's irritable outburst to the Press, claiming to have received no evidence, was rather ill-judged. And his infuriated suggestion that you should just send him the evidence is rather undercut by the fact that ... apparently ... he's unlikely to look at it even if you do. Lamb reminds us that, for PF, not a subtle man, 'reforming the Curia' means sackings, so that there are now fewer people around to help him look at those 50 troubling daily items. But Lamb's piece (the man is no fool) does show a real and growing unease about the shabby realities of this pontificate. If even the Pill is starting to notice ...
In the great big vulgar world of commerce, can there be any doubt that such a CEO would be facing strong pressures to consider his position?
Let's end back with Cupich. He seemed very uncertain about Holy Scripture. "I'd have to look that up"! And his interesting reliance on the deservedly well-known Dominical logion "I came not to teach you but to give you life" seems to overlook the popular murmur "He teaches not as one of the Scribes but with authority"; not to mention that great long section in S Matthew which people call 'The Sermon on the Mount', where the Man who is Torah Incarnate steals away our every sinful comfort with his insistent and prescriptive "But I say unto you".
Perhaps that 'Sermon' would be better Lenten reading than anything put out by PF and his sycophants. Especially if it were accompanied by revisiting the masterly dialogue between Professor Joseph Ratzinger and Rabbi Professor Jacob Neusner, in the middle volume of Jesus of Nazareth. Their exegesis of the Sermon is every bit as sparkling (and now even more relevant) as when they wrote it.
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Well one thing at least has improved since the early days of callow undergraduacy, and that is the quality of South African sherry. And even if it hadn't, I would still prefer it over any Soapy sycophants
Father, even if Pope Francis did not get to read the letter from the abuse victim through no fault, whatever, of his own, it would not excuse him from his appalling, public, papal condemnation of the victims as having committed calumny. The Pope's own words reveal the importance of evidence. What evidence did he have himself to justify this woeful, public accusation?
I find it hard to imagine how these victims must have felt at such an accusation, and in front of the whole world, particularly if they still regard Francis as their Pope. He doesn't seem to be as concerned for the mental health of certain others as for his own.
Here is yet another example...in the long history of pretentious fraud...of how heaven lets a man hang himself with his own rope:
On one particular day, to achieve one of his agenda items, Pope Francis publicly announced to his audience that priests cannot “use the confessional as a torture chamber.”
And on another day, in private, to satisfy some hidden agenda item, Pope Francis then reverses the just sentence of the CDF and Pope Benedict, and restored priestly faculties to Mauro Inzoli, a priest who was found guilty of literally using the confessional as a torture chamber to sexually abuse boys.
Can “lack of integrity” get any worse than that?
I fear that every time you visit their website they make a few shillings from the adverts all around, so you are indeed lining their pocket.
As for the Oxfam's CEO saying 'we didn't kill babies' my immediate response was; yes you did, thousands upon thousands of them, but you place it under the category of 'Empowering Women' one of the five fatuous phrases on your logo.
When the Tabet talks about 'zero tolerance', it's usually in reference to the Tridentine Mass.
Matthew ch 23 [15] Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves.
Quite apt for so many in the lofty teachers in our Church I think
This from Bp Cupich's talk Q&A (starts about 50:30):
"Do you really believe that the Holy Spirit was not present at the Synods? That the Holy Father is not inspired by the Holy Spirit in writing this document? Do we really believe that the Spirit is no longer guiding the church? Becasue that's why I pointed out Lumen Gentium 25: because the pope has said this is now official church teaching, as crafted by the bishops of Buenos Aires, there is a demand for all of us to embrace with mind and will, as Lumen Gentium says, what that official teaching is."
I won't reproduce LG 25 here, but merely point out that it says that bishops 'bring forth from the treasury of Revelation new things and old'. And there you have it--Vatican II says bishops bring new things out of Revelation. Hey presto!
"I'll have to look that up."
That reminds me of the priest who came to give a talk in my local church. When he was asked whether he believed that Jesus did in fact walk on water he said that he could not give an immediate answer; he'd need to think about it.
“The Torah incarnate...”. A brilliant summary of Our Lord’s teaching, through himself and with authority as the Torah incarnate. Thank you.
I appreciate, Father, every word.
PF is allegedly inspired by the Holy Spirit, when lovingly accompanying all that is unholy (including sins "crying for vengeance to heaven"), to - perhaps - get it "closer to the ideal"?
How is this merciful humbleness and (oh, so perfect) lukewarmness to be reconciled with simple reason (he so loves simplicity) and with the radical fundamentalism we are called on to espouse? -
"If your hand or foot causes you to sin,* cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna."
Cardinal Soupy should know that the “assistance” and not the “inspiration” of the Holy Spirit is promised to the hierarchy.
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